


Lost

by Teethteethteethteethteethteethteeth



Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo 2020 (Part One!) [10]
Category: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys - My Chemical Romance (Album), The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys (Comic)
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Bad Things Happen Bingo, Blood and Gore, Gen, Kind of happy ending??, Whump, Yikes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:00:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24961210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teethteethteethteethteethteethteeth/pseuds/Teethteethteethteethteethteethteeth
Summary: Newsagogo is safe, freed from Battery City. Cherri Cola, who saved her, can’t say the same for himself.
Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo 2020 (Part One!) [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1767937
Comments: 10
Kudos: 17





	Lost

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! This is an adaptation of the twitter canon for a prompt bingo!  
> The plot of this is Cherri Cola Cuts His Arm Off, so please don’t read if you think that might bug you. The graphic depictions of violence in this really are rather graphic.

Cherri Cola knows his arm’s fucked. Really, he’s known it’s fucked since some now-deceased S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W shot him with an acoustic. But now Newsagogo is home safe and he’s half-dead in some service tunnel beneath Battery City, and he’s got to get out or die trying. So he finishes tying the makeshift sling to his chest and tightens his grip around his blaster, though it feels strange and heavy in his non-dominant hand. And Cherri Cola prepares to blast his way through to the desert, just as he’d done so many years ago. 

He fights off a surprising amount of Dracs one-handed, laughing breathlessly as he shoots down a fleeing Drac in the back of its rubbery mask. He turns and runs down the now-cleared tunnel, each step toward freedom jostling his arm and setting it throbbing. 

He’s made it out of the Battery, nothing short of a miracle, and he stops to breathe in the frigid desert air before continuing on, eventually finding an abandoned shack to spend the night in. And now comes the hard part. 

He stares down at the knife in his trembling hand, before pulling the sheath off with his teeth and bringing the blade to his upper arm. He’s already wrapped a tourniquet by his shoulder, and the lack of circulation helps numb the pain somewhat. But it’s not enough. As he hacks away at his own body, his right hand twitches weakly in his lap, and it’s all he can do to keep going with each agonizing pull of the knife through his skin, muscle and bone. He bites down on the leather sheath of his knife to keep from screaming, but can’t bite back the agonized moans that burst from behind clenched teeth. Cherri’s blood runs hot and thick down his arm, coating his knife, and twice his hand slips, dropping the knife into the growing pool of blood on the floor. He pushes on. He wants to vomit, but can’t afford to waste the time it would take to spill the contents of his stomach. His blood is pouring out of him by the second and his arm feels like it’s on fire, and Cherri can’t even conceptualize what he’s doing to himself, not really. 

Finally, Cherri Cola’s arm falls to the ground, and Cherri lets out a few shaky breaths before taking up the needle and thread they’d prepared beforehand and piecing his skin back together. If he believed in anything, he’d pray the needle was sterile, but Cherri Cola never was much for faith.

Once he’s done with the stitches and wrapping makeshift bandages around what’s left of his arm, he lets himself pass out on the floor in a sea of his own blood and sleep until morning.

He buries the arm in a shallow hole in the sand beside the shed and continues walking. He needs food, and water, and probably a blood transfusion, but all he has is the determination not to die in this damn desert. The sun tears at his skin but he can’t afford to wait until dark to move— he’ll be dead by then if he doesn’t find someone soon.

He’s in and out of consciousness, in and out of lucidity for the next while. He’s been saved, taken to a hospital in Zone Four, but he doesn’t know it, doesn’t know the faces of the killjoys that saved him. When his thoughts are coherent enough for him to remember, he screams. The rest of the time, he murmurs wisps of words, hand tearing at his bandages, his hair, his skin. 

Finally, he’s awake, he’s aware more often than not, and he breaks out of the hospital in the middle of the night, four weeks after his escape from Battery City. It’s both easier and harder than he expected, and later he suspects the medics simply turned a blind eye to his departure, as so many ‘joys can’t stand being hospitalized. He wanders through the Zones aimlessly after that, lost and dazed. An Exterminator and a handful of Dracs surprise him in Zone Three, and ruthless killer that he once was, he manages to take them all out. He vomits into the sand afterwards, suddenly sickened by the act of killing. 

After that, he gives up, rides the blinding waves of the sun for a few years. In the blissful pain of the rays, he can almost remember what he experienced those four weeks in the Zone hospital, almost remember a voice speaking to him as a Drac, urging him to run. But it’s never enough, no matter how long he bakes in the sun, brown skin blistering and peeling away raw and pink and bloody. He doesn’t know how long he chases those half-remembered visions, only that one day a stranger in a helmet is crouching in front of him, watching as he burns his life away under the sun. They extend their hand, and a whisper in his ear tells him to take it, and so he does, and then he’s home.

**Author's Note:**

> Shout out to the anon who requested this, it was both fun and horrible to write~  
> Drop a comment below, and find me on tumblr @wishiwasthemoon-tonight!


End file.
